This edition: 20th Century Novelists

Episode Details

The abandonment of Victorian complacency in Britain resulted in an outpouring of artistic genius throughout the 20th century. Nowhere was this truer than for Britain's novelists. Joseph Conrad writes Heart of Darkness, and Virginia Woolf begins the influential Bloomsbury Group. E.M. Forster Writes A Passage to India, and D.H. Lawrence shocks the world. Somerset Maugham's prophetic The Razor's Edge is published, and William Golding writes Lord of the Flies. John Fowles pens The Existentialist, and Doris Lessing receives the Nobel Prize.

About this series

As English spreads across the globe, becoming the language of the Internet, understanding the extraordinary body of British literature has become ever more vital in the 21st century. This eight part series, hosted by Jonathan Cake, addresses this need by bringing the audience from the dawn of England's literary tradition through Chaucer to Shakespeare to William Wordsworth to Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to T. S. Eliot to J. K. Rowling. The series focuses on over 60 major authors, their insights, themes and impact on history.